Correlation of pathologic features in spectral domain optical coherence tomography with conventional retinal studies

To delineate pathologic changes in retinal cross sections obtained with spectral (Fourier) domain optical coherence tomography (SDOCT), so that the findings are maintained when collapsed into a two-dimensional fundus image for comparison with conventional retinal studies.

SDOCT of the posterior pole of 12 eyes (5 with neovascular age-related macular degeneration [AMD]; 7 with nonneovascular AMD) produced three-dimensional stacks of scans. Location of pathologic features was delineated with color markings in each scan before the stack was collapsed along the depth axis. This en face image contained retinal vessel shadowing and preserved color markings of delineated pathologic features relative to the vessel pattern and was superimposed onto conventional studies.

For patients with neovascular AMD, location and extent of choroidal neovascularization, macular edema, and subretinal fluid were visible on the two-dimensional summed images and, in some cases, involved sites not suspected with conventional imaging. For patients with nonneovascular AMD, the location of drusen and geographic atrophy were correlated with autofluorescence images. For one eye with drusen and three eyes with neovascular AMD, presence or extent of subretinal fluid identified by SDOCT was not visible using other imaging methods.

In this pilot AMD study, pathologic features within SDOCT scans were transferred into two-dimensional en face projections, enabling researchers to correlate lateral extent of pathologic features from SDOCT with conventional studies. This integration of SDOCT with other retinal studies is promising and will be useful to study the relationship between local OCT morphology and other parameters of retinal disease or function.